OK first of I do own a legal version of XP Pro SP2 (Retail). The reason I'm trying to get round activation is in the past I have activated allot online, when I didn't know you could only do it a set number of times before you have to keep going through the hassle of ringing tech support and giving them my code number then they read me one back etc etc. Now I have read that if you back up 2 files called "wpa.bak" and "wpa.dbl" then once xp is reinstalled go into windows as normal and when asked for activation just reboot in safe mode and copy these 2 files back into the windows/system32 folder overwriting what might be there, as described here http://tinyurl.com/5zmqqy I have also read that if you format the hard drive (which I want to do) then this will not work, but (please bear with me) when I partitioned and formatted my drive I took an image of just that, so the image has nothing on it just the 2 bare partitions then I went about installing my copy of xp about 7 months ago, now I have gone back on that old image (of just bare partitions) and installed a fresh copy of XP and tried the trick as mentioned above with the 2 files but it failed to work, it said something like "I need to activate before logging in" so it didn't work for me. The only thing I can think of that is causing the problem is when setting up windows it asks/gives the computer a name I "think" the fresh install was a different name so I'm guessing this could be the problem but welcome any feedback from anyone. I have to stress I'm not trying to screw the activation process up or do anything illegal I just want to save the hassle as mentioned above, I have posted to a few groups that I think may be relevant so sorry if you see this elsewhere. Jim
